Gratitude Day 24: Kierkegaard's Mistress or: Maybe I Should Feel Something
Thu 24 September 2026
What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music. People crowd around and say to him, “Sing again soon”—in other words, may new sufferings torture your soul.
(...)
Besides my other numerous circle of acquaintances I have one more intimate confidant—my melancholy. My melancholy is the most faithful mistress I have known; what wonder, then, that I love her in return.
—Søren Kierkegaard, writing as "Victor Eremita" (Victorious Hermit) in the "Diapsalmata" section of Part I of Either/Or
Is there a purpose in melancholy?
To what ends is a human soul stamped with difficulty and unspeakable groanings?
And what in the world does this have to do with gratitude?!?
Am I grateful for my melancholy, or would I just be grateful to be rid of it?
I certainly don't suggest that anyone should take Kierkegaard's view of it at face value, let alone as advice for healthy living.
But is there maybe a silver lining in it at all?
Today, I was driving to an appointment and I felt the all-too-familiar squeeze of sadness on my soul. I started practicing what I had learned about metacognition, to both examine and curtail the runaway train of melancholy. I was performing a modern CBT equivalent of the old Psalm,
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.
So, while driving to my appointment, I'm desperately trying to coach my brain into chilling the heck out and not internally doomscrolling. I'm shuffling through my personal music collection in my car, just trying to find something to change my mood, or even just distract me. About 80% of the way to my destination, I got stuck behind standstill traffic for a good ten minutes and was forced to really sit still and let the music speak to me.
Right about that time, in an exquisitely meta moment, I happen onto a track by David Crowder Band called, "The Lark Ascending or (Perhaps More Accurately, I'm Trying To Make You Sing)," which starts in the middle of a faux-interview (continued from the previous track), and slowly morphs into a performance of The Lark Ascending, and then finishes in a glorious crescendo anthem.
(Slightly abridged version of the interview portion:)
David: I don't think you should read too much into any of this you know It's...
I mean The Lark Ascending... was written by Vaughn Williams, and the work opens with this calm set of sustained chords, and then the violin enters as the Lark, and it starts with this series of ascending and repeated intervals and then these nimble, then elongated arpeggios.
And he actually found inspiration in a work by the English poet George Meredith, and included a portion of Meredith's poem on the flyleaf of the published work, and it went like this...
("The Lark Ascending" begins to play as he reads the poem:)
"He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.For singing till his heaven fills,
'Tis love of earth that he instils,
And ever winging up and up,
Our valley is his golden cup
And he the wine which overflows
to lift us with him as he goes.Till lost on his aerial rings
In light, and then the fancy sings."
(The interview continues:)
Interviewer: Huh. Wow. That's nice. But I mean... who is the Lark?
David: I don't know.
Interviewer: Uhmm. The script you gave me says something different. It says you are.
David: Yeah but I don't... I don't feel like the Lark much of the time and uhmm there are other Larks for me you know?
Interviewer: Wait a second. Ok. So correct me if I'm wrong, but in the script I have, you're making a point that art does this...
David: Right.
Interviewer: ...You know the whole, "It rises on wing from earth to fill the heavens pulling the rest of us with it. That as the Lark rises so do we."
David: Right. I'm unsure.
Interviewer: But. I mean...it...it says so right here.
David: Yeah. But the ground pulls at my feet.
Interviewer: Hold...hold on just a second. Uh, but I mean what about the number 7?
David: Did you ever notice that the sky is all the way to the ground?
Interviewer: Wait. Hold on. What?
David: We're walking around in it. We're in the sky. There is sky and there is ground and we're somewhere in between. That is where we live. And sometimes some of us take wing and when they do, when their feet leave the ground, even for a second, they pull the rest of us with them. And when we rise, and when we rise, and when we notice that the sky has been around us all along. We have been walking into it. It has been this constant collision. Divinity and depravity. And we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise and we rise...
(The last part of the interview drones on and fades as it is overcome by the the sung climax of the album:)
And I'm trying to make you sing
From inside where you believe
Like it's something that you need
Like it means everythingAnd I'm trying to make you feel That
this is for real, That life is happening
That it means everything
I'm just trying to make you sing
And so I'm listening to this crazy, crazy song (which I bought on CD twenty years ago) on repeat while stuck at an intersection in armadillo-butt surburbian DFW, this barren freaking wasteland of ideological skullduggery, and I'm getting rocked by unknown Beauty as the "elongated arpeggios" yoink my soul out of its crucible of unending melancholic stupor.
Even as my mind has every reason in the world to feel discouraged, depressed, melancholic, and unhappy, these strange, sonorous mathematical sequences are pulling me into a completely different world of joy and hope and... I simply do not understand it, but...
I give in...
every time.
I give in to this Unseen Hand pulling me out of the meagreness of human futility.
And I sincerely hope I always will.
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